The “True Detective” characters Thomas Papania and Maynard Gilbough aren’t always front-and-center in the Louisiana-set HBO noir drama, but their questions to Rust Cohle and Martin Hart drive the action. The serial-killer story’s final two episodes air at 8 p.m. Sunday (March 2) and March 9.

Some of the show’s most striking moments have been interrogation-room monologues by Cohle and Hart, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, respectively, in scenes where each actor is alone in the frame. But Tory Kittles and Michael Potts, the actors who play Papania and Gilbough, are always on the set, just off-camera, asking their characters’ questions.

While Harrelson and McConaughey sometimes worked long split days to record the scenes, Kittles and Potts were always there for both whether they were on-camera or not, Potts said during a recent phone interview. And Harrelson and McConaughey returned the professional courtesy when the camera was turned around.

“That's the only way really to do it, and that was the great thing about the process of this,” Potts said. “Most of my days were 10-hour or 12-hour days, half the day with Woody and then half the day with Matthew.

“No one’s talking to an empty room. We’re there.”

Filming on the series, some interiors for which were shot on sets in a former Harahan warehouse, had already begun early last year when Potts and Kittles arrived to do their scenes.

The production was already “a very well-oiled machine” by that time, Potts said. Director Cary Fukunaga and writer Nic Pizzolatto “already had a symbiotic thing going on, which we were able to fold into,” he continued. “They just wanted to take care of us, because they believed they had something really good, and they wanted us to be good at in it.”

Potts auditioned for the role without seeing a full script, he said, but did have detailed conversations with the writer and director about who his character would be.

“They were very clear,” Potts said. “They said he's cerebral. That’s the word they kept using. He’s very smart. He plays it close to the vest, but he is pretty much the guy who knows how to get information out of suspects, or people he's talking to. He has an intuitive sense about how to read human motivation. He has some expertise in human psychology.

“He’s very patient. He wants to get people talking because he knows at some point people will begin to talk a little too much, or say something that helps him connect the dots.”

“True Detective” is an anthology series. Its second season – not yet announced, but a sure thing – will restart the story with different characters in a different location. One of the thousands of speculative threads about where the show will go next wants to believe that Papania and Gilbough will be a bridge to the next story.

“In this business, I try not to hold on to that kind of speculation or rumor,” Potts said. “In my head, these are the episodes that I did. I’m happy that the show is successful, because it brings attention to me and my work, and to all of us. It’s always good to have been a part of something that is successful, so other people in the industry will find other work for me.

“I would love to do it if there were a second season, but it’s not something I’m thinking about at this point. I have no clue what is going to happen.”

As it stands, “True Detective” is another great credit for Potts, joining his role as Brother Mouzone in “The Wire.” In addition, on Sunday (Feb. 23), Potts, a Yale School of Drama product, concluded his role as Mafala Hatimbi in the Broadway production of “The Book of Mormon,” a role he originated in 2011. The musical gave him a leave of absence to shoot “True Detective.”

“The Wire” assassin Brother Mouzone, Potts said, is still the role for which he is most frequently recognized, but his “True Detective” character is moving up fast.

“I get tons of tweets now that say, ‘How weird is it to see Brother Mouzone playing a detective?’” Potts said.

Judged purely on style, HBO’s “True Detective” is a great show. Every week, it offers up shiver-inducing cable intoxicants, from an over-the-top action sequence so liquid it rivals a Scorsese flick to piquant scenes of rural degradation, filmed on location in Louisiana, a setting that has become a bit of an HBO specialty. (“Treme” and “True Blood” are also set there.)

Like many critics, I was initially charmed by the show’s anthology structure (eight episodes and out; next season a fresh story) and its witty chronology, which chops and dices a serial-killer investigation, using two time lines. In the nineteen-nineties, two detectives, Marty Hart and Rust Cohle (Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey), hunt down a fetishistic murderer, the sort of artsy bastard who tattoos his female victims, then accessorizes them with antlers and scatters cultish tchotchkes at the crime scene. In the contemporary time line, these ex-partners are questioned by two other cops, who suspect that the murders have begun again. If you share my weakness for shows that shuffle time or have tense interrogations—like the late, great “Homicide” or the better seasons of “Damages”—you might be interested to see these methods combined. The modern interviews become a voice-over, which is layered over flashbacks, and the contrast between words and images reveals that our narrators have been cherry-picking details and, at crucial junctures, flat-out lying. So far, so complex.

On the other hand, you might take a close look at the show’s opening credits, which suggest a simpler tale: one about heroic male outlines and closeups of female asses. The more episodes that go by, the more I’m starting to suspect that those asses tell the real story.

Presenting women as a parade of scolds, sluts, and the strung-out typically makes me hate a television series. But I love True Detective. While it is possible—by which I mean undeniably true—that I am completely in thrall to the ever-captivating McConaissance, I think True Detective has not triggered my usual response because it is, at least on some level, very aware of how stereotypically and perfunctorily it treats its female characters. When it comes to women, True Detective is undeniably shallow—but I think it’s being shallow on purpose.

A few redditors decided to look through the crew list on the show's IMDb page, and after some Googling, they some discovered various crew members' public Instagram accounts. With a little digging (since "True Detective" wrapped shooting months ago), the redditors found a ton of behind the scenes photos from what appear to be the last two "True Detective" episodes.